The present invention relates to a mounting clip to facilitate mounting of deck plates, cross bars or the like on the apertured beams of a storage rack.
Storage racks of the general type with which the present invention is intended to be used are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,042,221, issued to G. E. Rasmussen on July 3, 1962, and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The beams of such racks are provided with ledges which face each other in use and are substantially coplanar for receiving thereon the opposite ends of deck members, cross bars or other rack members or for directly receiving thereon the opposite edges of pallets. That type of prior art rack construction does not afford any means for accurately positioning the deck or cross bar members on the beams, or for preventing accidental dislodgement thereof from the beams in use. More particularly, the cross bars or deck members are frequently accidentally dislodged from the beam by the upward forces exerted by the fork members of forklift trucks used for loading and unloading material on the storage rack, this being a particular problem when there is no load upon the deck members or cross bars.
In order to alleviate this problem, special apertured beams have been provided for use with special types of cross bars having mounting fingers adapted to be inserted into the apertures for positioning the cross bars and retaining them against accidental dislodgement. This latter type of arrangement is disclosed in my copending application Ser. No. 781,172, filed Mar. 25, 1977, entitled "CROSS BAR", and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. But this construction requires the use of a specially designed cross bar, which cross bar is usable only with the apertured type of beams. Furthermore, deck members and cross bars provided with the older type of rack construction with non-apertured beams cannot be used with the apertured-beam rack of my aforementioned copending application. Thus, completely separate lines of cross bars and deck members for use with the two types of rack beams must be manufactured and maintained in inventory at considerable expense.